‘Alien Covenant’ Review

(FOX)Spoilers ahead, because that’s the only way I can fully review this movie.

Alien Covenant is Ridley Scott’s follow up to the ever so confusing 2012 Prometheus, you know the movie you left scratching your head, probably severely confused. Well guess what, I’m pretty sure this movie gave me an ulcer from how stressed out it made me. Apart from Logan, I honestly thought Alien Covenant had the best marketing campaign going. All the trailers have been incredible and I thought I knew what I was going to get with this, it looked terrifying as hell and it seemed like we were going to get a lot of our questions we had from Prometheus answered. Well CONGRATS, FOX, Ridley, you guys really pulled one over on me!! Seriously touché, I actually almost felt like getting up and walking out of this movie, not because it’s that’s bad, because of how much it was pissing me off! Ridley, my man, you’re an incredible filmmaker, one of the best to ever do it, why are you making it so difficult for people to enjoy and understand these movies. It’s like when an already really pretty girl, decides to cake on a ton of makeup, you don’t need it. You’re nice to look at to begin with. We don’t need all this extra stuff. The more I think about Alien Covenant, the angrier I am getting. I’m just frustrated because I had such high hopes for it, I thought it was going to be scary (it was not), I thought some questions would be answered (I left with more), and I can never quite figure out why these scientists are so stupid. It felt like Scream mixed with an alien movie. I’m not even kidding, it was Friday the 13th level cheese sometimes, and instead of Jason, we had Xenomorphs. Man there are so many problems with this movie, I will try my best not to lose my cool here.

So the Covenant is a spaceship heading to planet Origae-6, for the first ever colonization mission. Thousands of embryos and colonists are on board along with its crew, made up of couples. First things first, what the hell James Franco? I was excited to see this guy in an alien movie, and he might have set the land speed record for shortest cameo in a movie. I mean he didn’t even have a word of dialogue, if you count out the IPad message we see. I laughed, because honestly what the hell was the point? I could have played that role; so right from the beginning I was a little worried. So poor James Franco was the captain of the Covenant, so now that falls on the lap of Oram (Billy Crudup), I’ve always been a big fan of this guy. Along side Oram, we have Walter (Michael Fassbender) the droid, Daniels (Katherine Waterson), Tennessee (Danny McBride) and a few others, I’ll give Upworth (Callie Hernandez) a shout out, because I thought she was great and is a rocket. The crew is 15 large, but I don’t want mention everyone, because I don’t remember their names, they are all do disposable and half of them were just so stupid that they deserved their own fates. Here’s the one major problem I have with Covenant, these people are mainly all scientists and are part of the first colonization mission in human history, but man are they all SO STUPID! I’ll really get into that later, but my God, this movie at times is painful. Being the massive Alien fan I am, my hopes were so high for this movie and it just ultimately failed to meet my expectations, even just a little bit.

So when the Covenant loses some colonists because of some sort of space storm, the crew is rattled, and when Tennessee is outside the ship making repairs, he hears a mysterious radio transmission. After years and years investigating, researching and making sure the planet they have pick is the absolute perfect candidate. But good old caption Oram, decides too hell with that, and they proceed to this mysterious planet, as it also fits all the requirements to be a suitable planet for colonization. So after the crew decides to land on this new planet, well let’s just say, it doesn’t take very long for everything go to complete and utter shit. Just like that, but honestly what were these people thinking. A few of the crew members get infected by that black goo stuff from Prometheus and after several crew members die in some horrible ways, they soon lose the ability to communicate with the Covenant. Remember when I said some of these people are stupid. There’s one part, where no word of a lie, someone actually two people in a row slip on blood, and let the alien get loose. And not only does this one girl slip on blood, she follows that up by firing live ammunition in what appears to be the holding cell of multiple gas tanks. You already know how that ends up. Like just lock yourself in a room, you have a massive gun, why does Ridley Scott, make this feel like a 90s slasher film sometimes, it just a frustrating watching the same thing happen over and over again. You know exactly who is going to die, even before it happens. Things have just gone horribly wrong, people are dead, and you have the old “I’m going to the bathroom” all alone routine. Like give me a break. Going into Alien Covenant I thought it would be the scariest alien movie since well Alien. And when you have things like people going off on their own, and getting separated, it takes all the suspense and horror elements out of it and that was such a major let down. So finally David, the droid from Prometheus comes and saves the day, and from the very get go, you know this guy is bad, and they do such a poor job of even trying to make you think otherwise.

David tries to tell the crew what’s going on, how did he survive this whole time and meanwhile back on the Covenant, Tennessee and the other two crew members are trying to land on this planet, but there’s such a bad storm that they can’t even get into contact with them. So finally Oram, Walter and Daniels believe that David is really up to something, so before Oram decides to blow David to hell, David wants to show him something. For me this was the best and most enjoyable moment of the entire movie, it happens to happen right before the worst part of the movie. David shows Oram some face-hugger eggs, and he does that age-old trick of looking inside, curiosity killed the cat my friend. Obviously he gets one attached to him, and BOOM I believe we have the first ever Xenomorph born! Finally it only takes the entire movie, but something needs to be said. Aliens, they do such incredible practical effects, the whole movie is so beautiful, that’s Ridley Scott’s best trait as a filmmaker. But my god, The Xenomorph’s in this movie look so fake and so bad. All CGI from what I could tell, and it just takes you out of the movie. After the Xenomorph bursts through Oran’s chest, it likes raises its hands in the air, because David does it, and it was just so ridiculous. Remember in Space Balls, when they mock the chest bursting scene, and the Xenomorph dances after it’s born. I swear to god, that’s what this felt like to me, all it was missing, was a cane and a top hat. Oh and after that, David and Walter share a kiss, and again that was just nonsense. I’m rambling because all I wanted was this to be a great alien movie, and we didn’t get that, not even close. So finally we have a Xenomorph kind of doing Xenomorph things, and the crew is about the get rescued and Daniels fights one while like hanging from the ship, which was a pretty cool character moment from her. They tried really hard to make her like a Ripley type, but there can only ever be one Ripley, so I don’t understand why they do that. Create something new; create a new badass female character please.

So they finally get on board and they think everything is peachy, well it’s not, because some how a face-hugger gets on one of the remaining crewmembers. Now there are only 5 people left, two of them get freaky in the showers, and well remember what Randy, tells you in Scream. If you have sex, you die. So now it’s Tennessee and Daniels vs. the last Xenomorph. At this point in like yah, Danny McBride is about to fuck this thing up, and get his moment to shine, nope that doesn’t happen. They literally do what they always do, suck it out into space…..

I wanted Danny McBride to have his moment in this movie, because I thought he was the best part of the movie but that just never happened. He showed he’s a really great actor and should be taken seriously but I was just upset he didn’t even get to kill a Xenomorph in this. Finally everything is fine!!! Wait no, because remember, David and Walter are both the same and they wanted you think Walter came out victorious when the two droids threw down earlier in the movie. But I know better, so when David is putting Daniels and Tennessee back into their stasis pods, she figures this out, but it’s two late. David swallowed two face-hugger eggs and now plans to experiment with the embryos on board. That was the ending to the movie, I left more confused than I was after Prometheus.

Look there is some good in this movie; performances across the board were great. I loved McBride and Waterson and obviously Fassbender does a bang up job playing two characters. I even like the new comer Callie Hernandez, who was great in her little screen time in La La Land. The movie itself is breathtaking, but we all knew it would be going in. That’s what Ridley Scott does best. But it’s not scary at all, there’s no suspense, yes it’s gory as hell but that doesn’t make it scary. All these characters were just disposable, and quite frankly really dumb. I just wanted this to actually be an alien movie, but he’s trying to hard. He’s making the franchise way to complicated, go back to the roots man and just make us feel scared again. Enough with this big picture nonsense. Why is a droid the true villain of a movie called Alien. I hate David and I can’t wait for that milkman of a droid to die. This was a really hard review to write, I even saw this Thursday night and I wanted to wait, and see if my feelings changed a bit. In all honestly I feel like I dislike the movie more now, than when I walked out of the theatre. Just overall, this was a really big let down, one of the biggest let downs in a long time for me.

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6 thoughts on “‘Alien Covenant’ Review ”

It’s a shame Neill Blomkamp’s Alien movie is not being considered. I feel it is because Scott wants to retain creative control over the series. I personally like Blomkamp’s work, and I would like to see what he could do with the series. I honestly wouldn’t mind of we all pretended Alien 3 was a dream, and we saw a return of Ripley, Newt, and Hicks 🙂

The girl who slips on blood and blow up the spaceship is very stupid. If the virus would have been contagious, she should have reasoned she was infected. She was covered in the guy’s blood, so it was pretty stupid for her to sentence the other girl to death. I personally feel their death was unnecessary.

I liked this movie quite a bit more than you guys did, but I have to say that I 100% agree with your comments about Danny McBride. I couldn’t believe how GOOD his performance was and I wish he had been given more to do.